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Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.
Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here are 32 of his most famous tales - prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits that spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination.
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere - and anywhen.
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.
Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here are 32 of his most famous tales - prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits that spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination.
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere - and anywhen.
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft - everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style.
Derek Jacobi and Hayley Atwell lead an all-star cast in The Martian Chronicles, a thrilling new dramatisation reimagining Ray Bradbury’s timeless fable of doomed Martian colonisation. When the first expedition to Mars mysteriously disappears, Earth sends a second to find out what happened. But the real mission is classified.
On Halloween night, eight trick-or-treaters gather at the haunted house by the edge of town, ready for adventure. But when something whisks their friend Pip away, only one man, the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, can help the boys find him. "If you want to know what Halloween is, or if you simply want an eerie adventure, take this mystery history trip. You couldn't ask for better than master fantasizer Ray Bradbury," raves The Boston Globe.
For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future, to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last 30,000 years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire, both scientists and scholars, and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations.
The King of the Elves is the opening installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, expanded from the previous Collected Stories set to incorporate new story notes, and two added tales, one previously unpublished, and one uncollected.
"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than 12 years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers.
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
This book contains 26 of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. They represent the considered verdict of the Science Fiction Writers of America, those who have shaped the genre and who know, more intimately than anyone else, what the criteria for excellence in the field should be. The authors chosen for the Science Fiction Hall Fame are the men and women who have shaped the body and heart of modern science fiction; their brilliantly imaginative creations continue to inspire and astound new generations of writers and fans.
The Chrysalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. David, the young hero of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, always on the alert for any deviation from the norm of God's creation. Abnormal plants are publicly burned, with much singing of hymns. Abnormal humans (who are not really human) are also condemned to destruction - unless they succeed in fleeing to the Fringes.
When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.
From early work like "Rescue Party" and "The Lion of Comarre", through classic stories including "The Star", "Earthlight", "The Nine Billion Names of God", and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later work like "A Meeting with Medusa" and "The Hammer of God", this comprehensive short story collection encapsulates one of the great science fiction careers of all time.
The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury - a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds, and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness; the sight of grey dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere; the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.
That Ray Bradbury will ultimately be remembered as one of the finest writers of fiction of the 20th century is a virtual certainty, and the stories contained in this collection are some of the best examples of his remarkable body of work. The bujilding suspense and ultimate horror of "The Veldt." The unrelenting despair of "The Long Rain." The gentle wistfulness of "The Rocket Man." These stories are Bradbury at the peak of his powers and are treasures, each unto itself. Tied together in this volume they represent a literary feast.
I could go on and on about Bradbury, but the other real treasure of this edition is Scott Brick's absolutely remarkable narration. Brick captures every emotion that Bradbury wrote into these stories, delivering them with mastery, feeling and style that often transform passages from prose to pure poetry. I found myself often backing up a disk (I burn to CDs) just to hear Brick's delivery of a passage once again. Whenever I acquire an audiobook read by Scott Brick I expect a wonderful listening experience, but this reading was off the charts. Immediately prior to this edition I hear Brick's reading of Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles," which was also wonderful. However, in the case of "The Illustrated Man," something about his reading was different, deeper, more engaged and immersed in the tone and meaning of the stories. This is one of the best audiobook experiences I have ever enjoyed.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful
Loved this collection and the performance of it. Really drives into a lot of the pressure points in the genre.
Any one notice though, the narrator's character voices all sound like they are just on the verge of weeping, no matter who they are or what they're doing? It's really effective, but gets sorta old after a bunch of these stories in a row.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
My sincere apologies for my original review maligning the performance, the speed was wrong on my device. I corrected that and the rest of my listening experience was good.
I remember these stories from when I was a kid,The Vekt always being my favorite, but now that I'm all grown up and listened to these, I found several more that I'd either forgotten or just never understood when I was a kid so didn't remember. Made me buy the movie so I can watch that again too. It was fun "reading" this book again after so many years.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Excellent narration made the book come alive but zero pause between chapters was annoying - would have appreciated 5 seconds between stories
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Where does The Illustrated Man rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Love the stories but the reader irritates me, not his voice but the constant inflection in the downward direction. He should reserve those tones for endings. I'm going to avoid this reader in the future.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
The Illustrated Man is a telling of the stories of each illustration tattooed on his body. Each story is told like an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Most of the stories have a deeper message within it. I would be interested to hear how the last two generations view these stories since some of the features of technology are no longer fiction but actuality. I also wonder how they would view some of the social issues that are no longer present today. Makes one wonder if Bradbury saw the future or if the readers of the past were so enamored by his ideas they sought to bring them to fruition.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
I didn't know *anything* about this audio book when I got it, so I legitimately didn't know what to expect. This is a collection of 18 stories, all read by the same narrator. Here are my issues with it:
- There's zero transition between the stories, so they just run together. Sometimes I'd have to check my device to make sure I wasn't crazy and this was indeed a new story.
- The majority of the stories are about space. While that's neat and all, I would have liked more variety.
- The narrator's voice is good, but he always has the same sad tone and inflection. If he used that tone where appropriate, he would have knocked it out of the park. But since it's always the same tone, it really loses me.
Of course Ray Bradbury was ahead of his time, and it's genuinely amazing that he had this kind of imagination in 1952, but I probably wouldn't buy if I had it to do over.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Brick is an awesome narrator. Classic Bradbury tales wonderfully brought to life. One of the best audiobooks I have ever listened to.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
highly recommend. each story has a sci fi background but each time and era is vastly different. the reader sneds goosebumps down your spine at each corner. just a fantastic piece.
So... It's not my first go-round with this book or this narrator. Combining the two of them was a no-brainer. Although it didn't utilize many of Scott Brick's narrative skills, it was nice to hear new breath give life to Mr Bradbury's tales.
It is amazing to think these stories were written in the 1940s to early 50s. The sociopolitical comment in stories like The Other Foot are as relevant today as then. Be aware there us little or no gap between the stories on the recording, shame, as the narrator does a good job